"The support of The Sontag Foundation was really critical in helping us to make real progress in the treatment of patients with glioblastoma. Transcription factor networks were emerging as attractive diagnostics and therapeutic targets for this disease yet our understanding of these networks was just beginning. This grant helped me to set my lab's sights high and quickly move our research into exciting areas of transcriptional biology that otherwise would not have been possible."

About DSA-Funded Research

The focus of Dr. Ligon's work is on the basic and translational investigation of brain tumors. He specifically study's developmental transcription factors and their role in brain tumor formation and neural stem cell biology. Translational studies in the lab utilize genomics and pathology tools to study human tumors. His lab has expertise in adult and pediatric gliomas and specifically the work has focused on use of human patient derived cell line and patient derived xenograft models (PDCL, PDX), mouse genetic models (GEMMs). He has extensive collaborations around human clinical trials for brain tumors and development of biomarkers to improve outcomes of brain tumor patients.